Thursday, February 03, 2005

the minor fall and the major lift

The Daily Show's Great Moments in Punditry chose a scene last night including Govindi Murty from the Liberty Film Fest, and one of the little tykes was Indian as well, which sent me into a giggle fit for some reason. And Cinequest has given Ben Kingsley a much-deserved Maverick award. That's some good stuff.

I woke up this morning with another quote from Singles running through my head. I know, such a trivial movie, but somehow certain lines seem to really stay with me. This one had again to do with Cliff, but this time he's hanging out with my boyfriend Eddie Vedder, and has just gotten a scathing review. His response: "All this negative energy just makes me stronger! We will not retreat. We are unstoppable. Tonight, this band will rock Portland." For the record, is it even possible to rock Portland? I'm just wondering. I also want to point out that, make fun of Singles if you like, but do you know who was in that movie?? None other than Pig Vomit himself, one of the best actors repeatedly snubbed by Oscar, Paul Giamatti. But I will post my take on White Men Behaving Badly another time.

What was my point? Oh yes, failure. Failure is like TS Eliot's take on ends and beginnings. Failure is inevitable. It's something like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle: his principle is, when you pare it all the way down, that you can't have it all. Something has to give. You can know an electron's momentum precisely, but then you can't be sure of its position, and vice versa. Something has to give. Failure is that way. You might fail in one thing in order to find success in another. As Kenneth Koch would write, One train may hide another. Nothing is ever over, because some seeds are always planted in every failure. So, if I fail at this current endeavour of mine, I fail. It will hurt like hell, and I will bleed tears most likely, but it will not be the end of the world, it will just be the closing of one door down a long corridor.

Oh, and shall I add to this barrage of imagery? My brain is all over the place, obviously. But I was also thinking of archaebacteria, life forms that survive smashingly under conditions generally thought to be inhabitable. Adaptation is a powerful thing. Negative energy does make you stronger- it's a biological reality. Is that much of a consolation when you're in the trough, at the lowest of the lows, suffering the mean reds? Not really. But it's true nonetheless.